Building on the statement above regarding Celestial Focus, according to the latest SimCraft data for 3.1 (source), there is now less than a 1.5% difference between Wrath Eclipse and Starfire Eclipse if you are optimizing your cast cycle for one or the other. This is good news for Druids who like switching things up, or more significantly, who like me find themselves losing DPS due to accidentally proccing Wrath Eclipse.

The not so good news is that Wrath spam is demonstrably less mana efficient, resulting in a higher probability of going OOM in a long fight. This is because of two things: Wrath has a lower DPM than Starfire, and you will need to refresh Moonfire more often because you aren't extending the duration with Starfire.

The really bad news is that SimCraft places us well over 10% behind Surv/Marks Hunters, 15+% behind some Warlock builds and HaT rogues, and a whopping 20% behind Ferals. I can only hope that the data is skewed or the numbers for those classes come down a bit before 3.1 launches.

Spirit doesn't make up 20% of the difference between Balance and Feral, nor does it explain why 0/40/31 Warlocks are in the #4 position. Spirit as a stat is actually pretty good for Balance Druids, especially if you diverge from the traditional build to drop a point into Intensity.

Further, only the Arcane mage in the sample data set is heavily geared with Spirit; the Fire and Frost builds have minimal amounts. The Fire build that hits 6K DPS has more Intellect, Hit, and Haste than the Balance build, albeit slightly less crit.

One change we are (probably) going to make that will help Resto PvP a little is this:

The Tree of Life talent currently grants bonus healing to group members and reduces the cost of your hots in tree form. We would like to change the talent to say "Reduces the mana cost of all your hots and also lets you go into tree form, which grants bonus healing."

In other words, you would not need to be ToL to get the cheaper hots (in PvE or PvP) so long as you had the ToL talent. In PvP, you could still use tree form when you wanted to be more tanky but your efficiency would not be so bad when in caster form.

The core point spend is pretty much self-evident; there end up being exactly two points left over to spend on mana regeneration talents. Of the talents available, Omen of Clarity is obviously #1, while Intensity continues to be superior to Dreamstate with any significant amount of Spirit.